Sam Driscoll/Dan Moore/Peter Agg/Michael Balthazart/Amaan Akram/Rebecca Ferguson
The Mill
3d Artists
Melanie Climent/Can Y Sanalan
The Mill
Matte Painting
Ashley Tyas
The Mill
Motion Graphics
Brief Explanation
This ad, sees one of the jungle’s most majestic apes leave its leafy home and explore the wonders that the energy of the big city has to offer, in a charming story. The CG creation is seen climbing buildings, playing on escalators and appreciating the bright lights of Piccadilly Circus
Creative Execution
The VFX team went to extraordinary lengths to create an ape that looked 100% photo- real; building the skeleton from scratch and developing a fully functional muscle system, as well as sculpting each wrinkle by hand, before seamlessly comping her onto live action plates of a busy city scape.
It was vital to gather a large amount of reference material and study orangutans across a range of mediums before the artists could start creating a character with as much personality and detail as Maya.
The anatomically correct skeleton was built first, starting from very loose blocking to small details such as wrinkles and pores of the skin. Maya’s rig was then developed in-house, with the muscle system adding an extra level of weight to the realism of the ape, as it meant as she moved each muscle would react, affecting the shape of her skin, the way it wrinkled and the movement of each hair. There was even a whole team dedicated to “grooming” and styling the ape’s hair.
Using HDRI lighting information collected on the shoot, the team recreated lighting scenarios of London back in CG. It was crucial to get a good dynamic range of lighting to ensure that the correct specularity as achieved in the hair shading. Maya’s hair was created using propriety hair shaders , which meant details such as transmission (the effect of a rim-light or back-light) could be controlled as well as how much light was reflected off the hair.